How to be Famous

A riotous novel set in the epicentre of Britpop London from the author of Sunday Times Number One bestseller, How to Build a Girl

Life is always better backstage, isn't it?

'Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump' -Helen Fielding, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's DiaryThe Sunday Times Number One bestseller about a young women making it in a world where men hold all the power

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I’m Johanna Morrigan, and I live in London in 1995, at the epicentre of Britpop. I might only be nineteen, but I’m wise enough to know that everyone around me is handling fame very, very badly.

My unrequited love, John Kite, has scored an unexpected Number One album, then exploded into a Booze And Drugs HellTM – as rockstars do. And my new best friend – the maverick feminist Suzanne Banks, of The Branks – has amazing hair, but writer’s block and a rampant pill problem. So I’ve decided I should become a Fame Doctor. I’m going to use my new monthly column for The Face to write about every ridiculous, surreal, amazing aspect of a million people knowing your name.

But when my two-night-stand with edgy comedian Jerry Sharp goes wrong, people start to know my name for all the wrong reasons. ‘He’s a vampire. He destroys bright young girls. Also, he’s a total dick’ Suzanne warned me. But by that point, I’d already had sex with him. Bad sex. Now I’m one of the girls he’s trying to destroy. He needs to be stopped.

But how can one woman stop a bad, famous, powerful man?

Scroll down to watch a video of Caitlin describing How to be Famous in three words----------------------------------------------------

Reviews

“
A deeply satisfying tale of sex, drugs, britpop, unrequited love, London, and a narrator I completely adore. This is funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure. Glorious and life-enhancing
”

NINA STIBBE, Sunday Times bestselling author of Love, Nina

“
Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump
”

HELEN FIELDING, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary

“
The dazzlingly gifted Moran makes mythic the maligned, misunderstood, momentous 1990s. Prose crackling and fizzing with charm, mischief and passion, she is the sharpest, funniest, most influential writer of her generation, which is also my generation, annoyingly
”

STUART MACONIE

“
It's quite a ride, this book. It's laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic and fiercely angry. Often all at once ... beautifully written
”

THE TIMES

“
Moran's words are, as always, kind, tender and achingly funny. This is a real love letter to teenage girls and North London - if this book was a popstar I'd be putting its posters up on my wall and doodling its name all over my Maths book
”

“
A glorious life-affirming love letter to teenage girls, pop music, best friends and that one guy you'll never get enough of
”

RED MAGAZINE

“
A machete-sharp follow up [to How to Build a Girl] ... boasts a rogue's gallery of brilliant characters familiar to anyone who has ever read the NME
”

IRISH INDEPENDENT

“
This gloriously rude, rambunctious read, finds Moran applauding the much-maligned music choices of teenage girls, figuring out the rules of how to be famous and celebrating the importance of getting good and angry about the rubbish stuff that happens to young women
”

“
A fist-pumping celebration of being female. In the same way that many of us will have recognised our twenty-year-old selves in Cat Person, most women will see something of their teenage sexual encounters in this book
”

IMAGE MAGAZINE

“
a gloriously acute and funny writer...naturally the book is peppered with jokes, Moran's trademark wordplay and some snappy one-liners...warm and insightful
”

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Extract

ONE

When I was eleven, I formally resigned from the family dream.

From the earliest moment I can recall, the family dream was simple: that, one day, we would get money from somewhere – win the pools, discover a medieval chalice at a jumble sale, or, least likely of all, earn the money – and leave Wolverhampton.

‘When the bomb drops, we want to be on the other side of those,’ Dadda would say, at the end of our street – pointing across the flat fields of Shropshire, to the distant Black Mountains. We practically lived in the country.

‘If they nuke Birmingham, the fallout won’t reach Wales – those mountains are like a wall,’ he would add, nodding. ‘We’ll be safe there. If we get in the van and drive like fuckers, we’d be over the border in two hours.’

It was the mid-eighties, when we knew, for a fact, that the Russians would launch a nuclear war against the West Midlands at some point – the threat was so visceral that Sting even had written a song about it, warning that it would, by and large, be bad – so we were absolutely braced for it.